The Year Rap Broke

Rap fans tend not to agree on very much these days. The hip-hop monoculture dissolved around the turn of the century and, ever since, dissensus has reigned supreme. Still, the world of rap music has felt especially fragmented in 2012, as if everything that was once cracked had finally shattered. Then 2 Chainz charged an inflated feature fee to stomp on all of the pieces while saying "Yeaauh." Today there are more semi-successful rappers than ever before, churning out a wider variety of songs and tapes at a faster pace for increasingly small niches. Even the most popular artists seem to be chasing very different goals sonically while uncomfortably still occupying the same space. So the idea of hanging some great narrative thread on the year in rap and then tying it in a bow seems downright laughable at this point. I was going to complain about this, in the way I've tended to use this column to complain about everything thus far, but it seemed like it might be more fun to look at some of the individual fragments that the year produced in an appropriately piecemeal manner. Leggo:

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Future gargled Listerine through Auto-Tune, chased butterflies and changed lives at the same damn time. As long as he doesn't fall into a pit of Ja Rule bandanna-tied-in-front sensitive-thug moves, he will rule 2013 and every year after that one.

Kendrick Lamar made an album just so you could call it a classic. The one thing almost every rap fan can agree on in 2012 is that good kid, m.A.A.d. city was a very good record, but K-Dot had already made his statement months earlier with the non-album blog leak "Cartoon & Cereal", which is like good kid (and basically Kendrick's entire thesis and existence) condensed to its rawest elements in just under seven minutes-- from "Animaniacs" and "traditional Compton kitchens" to gang warfare and salted wounds. The song's length is justified through the rapping alone. Kendrick's syllable slither is as tightly wound as it ever has been and one-time MMG bench warmer Gunplay plays the role of exclamation point on some chest-pumping, truth-to-power Goodie Mob shit. But "C&C" truly succeeds solely through its use of space-- sometimes entire measures pass with no more than three kicks. This is a welcome alternative to the clutter of hooks and instrumental flourishes that drag out much of good kid in the interest of projecting seriousness. Kendrick's words need room to move around. To paraphrase some old rapper who isn't all that popular anymore, let that bish breath.

Gunplay didn't just kill "Cartoon & Cereal". He killed MMG's "Power Circle", rapping about seabass and santeria candles in a cipher of middlebrow yacht rappers who are still stuck on keys and hate and hard work and Jordans. (Kendrick was there too, and though he is not a middlebrow yacht rapper, he did get killed.) Gunplay killed "Bible on the Dash", pulling focus out of his lonely last stogie. He killed "Take This" and he killed his Bugatti's engine slowly by settling for 87 octane. He killed "Fuck Shit in My Life" and all the bottom feeders, snakes, and centipedes that lurked within. He killed Billy Ocean and wore his skin on Trina's "Beam". He killed everything else then he went fishing. He does not have a release date yet.

Mike Will Made It made the entire year. If his presence wasn't felt as intensely as the super-producers of the past-- Lex Luger, Lil Jon, Pete Rock, Rick Rubin-- it's only because of how broad his talent spreads. Rather than hammer away at the same basic formula, he flipped his sound on almost every record he laced-- and any one of them could've defined a lesser beatsmith's career. He shimmered synth harpsichords with Future's "Neva End", the muted ratchetness of Juicy J's "Bandz a Make Her Dance", the piano-and-clap explosion of 50 Cent's "OJ", the sampled harp plucks and flutes of Schoolboy Q's "My Hatin' Joint", the sheer aggression of Gucci's "Walking Lick". He even crafted space ballads for the likes of Brandy, Rihanna, and Jeremih. There are common threads in his work, of course: theremins, sporadically applied lowpass filters, and most importantly that thump. Nobody carved out a more punishing low end this year than Mike.

The rigid clap driven wave of West Coast ratchet music quietly ruled the year. While Tyga's DJ Mustard-laced "Rack City" might have represented the commercial peak of the sound, elements thereof continued to be absorbed by radio playlists via the likes of Rihanna's "Birthday Cake" and Drake's "The Motto" all year long. The energy was a welcome reprise to the usual moping that Drizzy brings to the airwaves. Meanwhile the scene's Californian representatives-- YG, Problem, Iamsu, Loverance and pioneer/permanent fixture E-40 (who released about a hundred songs across five albums this year)-- continued to stitch the threads of hyphy and jerk music into a more contemporary quilt to much commotion in the homeland. They're not just gaining momentum in Los Angeles and the Bay Area either, but in the less charted locales between like Bakersfield and Fresno, inspiring above the head hand claps and below the waist cheek claps. Even if this stuff disappears from radio next year it will inevitably live on forever in the memory of YouTube Twerk videos.

For all her pop success, Nicki Minaj went almost underrated as a rapper in 2012. The third of Roman Reloaded that she did decide to spit on absolutely slayed most of her peers in terms of ambition and execution. She's was riding the claps hard too, but on cuts like "Come on a Cone" and "Stupid Hoe" producers Hit-Boy and DJ Diamond Kuts stretched them to new angles with acid squelches and dancehall riddims, creating a certain pixie stick headrush effect. Nicki might be one of just two rappers that possesses the energy to ride this sort Pokemon seizure music effectively and the only one who possesses the confidence to go all in with it.

The other, Meek Mill, could use some of that confidence. The Philadelphia street icon and his in-house producer Jahlil Beats predicted the Year of the Clap with the Flamerz mixtape series. And Meek abandoned it almost completely on his major label debut. Blame it on Rick Ross or blame it on good taste, butDreams & Nightmares was an outright grueling display of cathartic virtuosity, dragged down by over maudlin beats and songs that did no justice to the rapper. Meek need claps to spazz on, not Kenny G smooth jazz solos. At the very least Meek did give us the epic gospel tinged "Amen" and the most powerful album intro of the year.

While concerned citizens stressed over his influence (and not his fate, as they should have been stressing) Chief Keef went and made a Soulja Boy album. It's not that Finally Rich sounds like Soulja Boy, per se. Sometimes it does, frequently it doesn't. But it is like Soulja Boy. Not "Crank Dat" Soulja necessarily, but most everything that came after, all that warm chameleon slithering. The way Soulja was absorbing influences and becoming the lazy pop version of Gucci Mane, Roscoe Dash, and Lil B, Keef draws elements from Future, Waka, King Louie, Fat Trel. and Soulja himself and melds them into a lazier and more goonish formula. The parallels make perfect sense. Both were just kids thrust into the limelight direct from the YouTube womb. While left mostly to their own devices, they were expected to advance rapidly in the wake of a sudden fame that was desired but not truly expected. So they turned to mimicry and managed to build something unique in their sheer ineptitude.

Old man 2 Chainz had a huge year, he was everywhere stretching his vowels and making ratchet ass dad jokes (goofy phone handset tip to Al Shipley for that one). Still his Based on a True Story hit a slightly lower ceiling than expected. It rang out but only shortly and seems likely to be forgotten entirely by this time next year. I suspect this partially because he passed his best verse to Kanye for "Mercy" but more so due to his inability to settle on a sound. He generated hits, but he did so on the terms defined by radio. Drake propelled "No Lie," Kanye made "Birthday Song" viable, and DJ Mustard dominated "I'm Different." The once and future Tity Boy modeled his career closely on Lil Wayne's but he jumped ahead too early, scattering the tone of his production broadly across demographics when he should've taken the time to create a singular personal sound. He needed a Carter 1 not a Carter 3, a Ready to Die not a Life After Death. (His one-time boss Ludacris had the same problem, which might be why, for all his hits, he always seemed to live perpendicular to the larger rap conversation.) It should be fun to see how Tity's career progresses from here. I'd like to think he'd be able to continue down the path that his verse on DJ Drama's "My Moment" hints at, retreating to his more introspective Playaz Circle roots and rapping about wanting the Braves to win instead of turning camel toe into casserole all the time but if he does he'll probably lose all the momentum that his ignorance set off this year. Especially now that Trinidad James has hulked out the 2 Chainz persona and is ready to smash on his fan base.

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Kanye West is a vampire now. He thrived in 2012 by sucking the life blood out of music's greatest talents, then vomiting a nouveau riche pseudo progressive solid gold sheen all over their efforts. Look at how he butchered Young Chop's near perfect "I Don't Like" by doing entirely too much with its sparse instrumental and growling about his crucifixion complex. HisCruel Summer compilation was a similarly cluttered mess from top to bottom but it still produced a pair of major hits because all his victims pass him their best music, powerless to his advances. Not even Yeezy's ego or the superfluous choir of angelic chants that usually come with it would be enough to derail 2 Chainz's bombast on "Mercy" or the elastic funk of Hit Boy's "Clique".

A gang of white kids rapped horribly in and about cargo shorts this year. More of them will be coming in 2013. Paint your door post with lamb's blood.

The separatist college radio indie rap groupthink hold that poptimists fought so hard to end (via a thousand positive Mike Jones reviews in the mid-2000s) has officially reemerged. When Lil B and Odd Future retreated to the embrace of their insular fanbases they left the floodgates open for some seriously sketchball acts to become blog and Tumblr darlings. While it's nice to see Killer Mike finally get some recognition for being overtly political over El-P beats after years of being overtly political over beats that weren't produced by El-P, the rest of the rap that was uniquely propped up on indie PR machine/cool kid blog circuit this year was ephemeral, amateurish, or even outright depressing. I won't name names since you guys seem to love them. Or at least you love reblogging their photos on Tumblr and getting free drinks at their Heineken sponsored shows. Have fun, drive safely and just know that none of this stuff is notable or interesting or entertaining to anybody who was listening to rap music back before 2008.

A$AP Rocky and French Montana became the only New York rappers under the age of 30 to be played on New York radio with any regularity. If my memory serves me right neither of them acutally rap on their respective hits, they just lip sync Drake lyrics and wear funny outfits in the videos.